DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services

Facts

Joshua DeShaney was born in 1979. In 1980, a Wyoming court granted his parents a divorce and gave custody to his father, Randy DeShaney, who moved with Joshua to Winnebago County, Wisconsin. In January 1982, the father's second wife told the police that he had hit the boy. The county Department of Social Services (DSS) interviewed the father, who denied it, and did not pursue the matter. In January 1983, Joshua was admitted to a hospital with multiple bruises and abrasions. The physician suspected child abuse and notified DSS, which obtained a juvenile court order placing Joshua in the temporary custody of the hospital. A county Child Protection Team decided there was insufficient evidence of abuse to keep him in the court's custody. It recommended protective measures, and the father agreed to cooperate. The juvenile court then returned Joshua to his father. A month later, emergency room staff reported suspicious injuries. Over the next six months, a DSS caseworker saw suspicious injuries on Joshua's head during her monthly visits. She recorded her suspicions in her files but did nothing more. In November 1983, the emergency room again reported suspected abuse, and DSS still took no action. In March 1984, Randy DeShaney beat 4-year-old Joshua so severely that he fell into a life-threatening coma. Joshua suffered brain damage so severe that he is expected to spend the rest of his life confined to an institution. The father was convicted of child abuse.

Issues

1. Does the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment require a State to protect a person from private violence, so that a failure to protect violates that person's liberty interest?
2. Did a special relationship arise, creating a constitutional duty to protect Joshua, because the State knew of the danger from his father, said it would protect him, and once took temporary custody of him?

Holding

The State's failure to protect Joshua from his father's violence did not violate the Due Process Clause. Joshua was not in state custody when he was harmed, and the State neither created the danger nor made him more vulnerable to it, so it owed him no constitutional duty.